The current toolset to build Holographically for HoloLens can be daunting. It requires Windows 10, a special Unity build and Visual Studio.
Since April I have been working with Oregon Story Board on Microsoft Research Grant exploring Holographic computing in trade based education. I taught a class to build a Holographic Transmission. Through this effort I became keenly aware of the steep learning curve regular digital designers and coders have in making a hologram.
I wanted to find a way to get designers and creative coders exploring the wonderful world of mixed reality and holographic computing. How could I get a more diverse audience (not just gaming and vfx pro’s) playing with “Holographic Reality”.
I figured the best way to do this was to organize a hack. I set myself the task of running a series hack days that would allow participants to use their native tools and environments to play.
Portland Creative Coders group members Ben Purdy and Reid Blomquist graciously agreed to help me run the hack day and build the required infrastructure.
In order to minimize the time between “idea” and “hologram” we created infrastructure called “Mesh Streamer”. This connects sketches built in three.js, Processing or Unity to the HoloLens by streaming the 3d mesh data to a app on the HoloLens that re-creates it.
Participants use the frontend (Mac, Linux, Windows, iOS, Android) they want to create in. Then connect to a node server and start streaming the mesh.
Within 1 hour we had creative coders on Windows and Mac viewing Holograms they had running in a browser, on desktop or mobile. The video shows a selection of what we created.